|
Someone posted about Wal-Mart and other big stores simply being progress, but that seems to ignore the wider economic impact in the areas that house them.
About 20 years ago the town where I live was thriving, with streets full of 'mom & pop' shops all doing a reasonable trade, and the region was quite wealthy.
Then comes the Asda (now owned by Wal-Mart) supermarket, slapped down onto a huge car park which used to serve the town centre. Now the town comprises of a few 'everything for £1' type shops, charity shops and a monolithic one-stop-shop Asda selling everything from clothes, dvds, tvs, food, gardening equipment, stationery and so on.
Rather than, say, 40 people earning a reasonable wage running their own business you now have 1 person raking in a large salary as a manager and 39 people on a minimum wage stacking shelves and running the checkouts.
This has happened to every sort of business around and a significant chunk of the population are unemployed or in near poverty.
'Progress' has meant cutting costs by turning the services into warehouses that employ people at minimal rates. The people in the area have to shop at these cheaper places now because the process of progression means nobody can any longer afford to buy things anywhere else because the decent paying jobs have just disappeared to line the pockets of the directors of new 'efficient' large scale operations.
I'm sorry if that all sounds a bit ranty, but this has killed my community and basically bankrupt my family and that of many other people i know.
Also on the technology issue and social interaction, if there's one thing I like to do more than playing games or watching a film, then it's doing so with friends.
|